“See, nice and smooth,” Hail consoled his terrified passenger.
If Kara’s hair was on fire, Hail wouldn’t have noticed much of a difference in her demeanor.
Only a few moments into the flight and Kara had started shaking uncontrollably, like she was having some sort of panic attack. And now, ten long minutes later, she still looked tweaked but was starting to calm down a little. Hail felt bad for ribbing her so badly by letting her know that no one was flying the plane. But he hadn’t anticipated that she would freak out so badly.
“See, no problems. Everything is under control,” Hail said in his most compassionate tone.
“Everything except that no one is flying the plane.” Kara shot back.
“No, someone is flying the plane. They just aren’t on the plane.”
“Oh, let me correct myself,” Kara snarled. “I mean that a boy that shouldn’t be driving a car, let alone flying an airplane, is flying us like a remote controlled toy.”
“That’s more correct,” Hail told her, “but our flight systems are much more advanced than toys.”
Kara looked at Hail as if she wanted to punch him in his face. Now she was more angry than scared.
“Why in the world would you not have a pilot on the plane? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Sure it does,” Hail responded. “He is not old enough to fly the plane; therefore, he can’t be on it while he is flying it. There are all sorts of Federal Aviation Administration rules about that. Heck, he couldn’t legally fly this jet over US soil.”
“But he is flying it!” Kara yelled incredulously.
“But there are no laws that govern remote pilots, only pilots that are actually on board. And ninety-nine percent of the time, most planes are flying on auto-pilot. It’s only the takeoffs and landings that may require a pilot. And many planes these days could do it all if they were trusted to do so.”
“But why?” Kara tried to reason with Hail. “Why not just have a regular old pilot that flies the plane?”
“Lots of reasons,” Hail said.
“Give me one of them.”
Hail thought for a moment and said, “It’s a long flight back to Balikpapan City, over fifteen hours. I don’t want my pilot to fly any longer than six hours. I don’t think it’s safe.”
“Where?” Kara asked. “What’s Balikpapan City?”
Hail ignored the question and continued, “So I have my pilots fly in six hour shifts. I want them fresh. If you think about it, having someone at the controls for fifteen hours is pretty crazy. Having a remote pilot fly this plane makes a lot more sense.”
Kara’s mind swam with questions and she didn’t know which to ask first. She decided on…
“Where are they flying this thing from again? You said it was a remote command center. Is that in Balikpapan City ― wherever the hell that is?” She sounded lost and scared.
Hail was quiet for a second and mulled over his response. She would soon see his ship and everything inside, so keeping its location a secret didn’t seem like such a big deal.
“The command center is in Balikpapan City, right now. Balikpapan is a seaport city on the east coast of the island of Borneo, in the Indonesian province of East Kalimantan. It’s a pretty big city for that area with a population of a half million.”
Hail knew it was important to start building some trust. He felt confident that his last statement was truthful.
He looked at Kara and she looked completely overwhelmed. All her tough CIA bravado had been stripped away and she was still freaking out. It was time to make nice.
“You don’t have to worry. I’ve done this trip dozens of times. Not to the United States, but all points around the globe. My pilots are good and we have backup feeds from mirrored satellites if the communication link were to go down.”
Hail realized that had been a mistake. He could see the question forming in Kara’s mind before she asked it.
“What feeds are you talking about? Are you talking about the connection to the controls on this plane from your remote pilots? Is that the feed and if so, what happens if both feeds go down?”
Hail smiled reassuringly. “Yes, that’s the feed, but like I said. The plane remains in auto-pilot for almost the entire trip. So if the feed went down, the plane would just continue on until the link was reestablished. No problem.”
Kara did not look convinced.
Hail looked serious and said, “Listen, I don’t want to die any more than you do,” which was a lie. Hail guessed that she was not as damaged as he was and therefore had more respect for her own life. “And if I thought that my technology was not rock solid, I wouldn’t fly around the globe like this. I have good people who work for me and we dazzle in this form of robotics. So you need to just chill and go with the flow. If it makes you feel any better, I am certified to fly this plane and could do so in a pinch.”
Kara understood at this point that she didn’t have much choice.
“Do you have anything to drink?” Kara asked, looking over her shoulder at the bar.
“Sure,” Hail said. “But I have to make a call to Balikpapan City to have them turn off the buckle-seatbelt sign.”
Kara looked around for the indicator Hail was talking about.
“I’m just kidding,” Hail chuckled. “This plane doesn’t have anything like that.”
The woman didn’t think that was funny.
Hail unbuckled his seat belt and stood. Kara did the same, taking a moment to arrange her black skirt and straighten her black vest.
Hail noticed again that she was wearing a one-piece full black body sock, under her skirt and vest.
That should come in useful, Hail thought.
He motioned for Kara to sit on the white leather couch. She did so and began looking around the cabin.
“Do you think you have enough monitors on the plane?” she asked sarcastically as she began counting each of them.
“These days everything is video. I don’t like to carry around a tablet, so I try to make sure that most of the places I spend a great amount of time have plenty of monitors.”
“What are you drinking?” Hail asked.
“Southern and seven,” Kara replied.
“An old fashion girl,” Hail commented.
“Not really. I don’t drink much but my roommate in college drank southern and sevens, so that kind of became my drink.”
Hail picked up a glass in one hand and a bottle of Southern Comfort in the other.
“And where did you go to college?” he asked.
“Middlebury College in Vermont.”
“Nice place. Vermont is beautiful in the summer, but damn cold in the winter. As I get older, I find that I don’t like the cold ― at all.”
Hail opened a small refrigerator and retrieved some ice cubes and divided them between two glasses. He then poured half a can of Seven Up and a shot of Southern into each glass and swirled the mixture with a swizzle stick.
“Cold doesn’t really bother me. Sometimes it’s nice, like around Christmas and such. Well, it used to be nice,” Kara corrected herself.
“Cold isn’t nice anymore?”
“No, Christmas isn’t nice anymore.”
“And why is that?” Hail asked.
He handed Kara her drink and sat down next to her.
“Because I lost my parents a few years ago. They loved Christmas and I was their only child. So now, with them being gone, Christmas is just kind of a sad time for me.”
Hail considered how much of his personal life he should share with this woman. There would be common things in his life that she had already looked up in their powerful CIA computers, therefore telling Kara stuff she already knew was no risk at all. Plus, it would give him an opportunity to find out a little more about her. After all, he was certain that if he Googled this woman, there would not be a single hit or photo or Facebook or anything about her on the entire Internet. She was CIA all the way.